Fusion Holiday Celebration - Diwali2Xmas

HOW I celebrate my holidays?

Our holiday celebrations is a fusion celebration with Indian and American festivitity.

It start with the Indian festival Dassara, usually in early October. We celebrate the triumph of good over evil by dancing a traditional Indian dance called the Dandia, which is dancing with short sticks with the Garba music. After Dassara, we celebrate Halloweeen, which is really fun, as kids get to go trick-or-treating and get lots of candy. We get to wear our favorite costume and put scary stuff around the house, carve the pumpkins. Soon after, we celebrate Thanksgiving with a vegetarian feast with family and friends. This is a formal sitdown lunch.

But before Thanksgiving, we celebrate Diwali, which is the Indian festival of lights. My dad decorates the outside of the house with lights. Our neighbors used to wonder why we have the house lit up, but now they all know. In fact one of them already knew about Diwali and he was not Indian. My cousin comes over to my house and we celebrate by lighting up July 4^th fireworks. That is really fun. We also light up lamps on the day of Diwali and put all around the house. We also worship the God of Wisdom and Wealth (Ganesh Laksmi), We wear new clothes and then after the pooja we get to eat sweets and a traditional Diwali dinner. This dinner is special, as we continue a tradition of eating a few things that has been done in our family for generations.

This is all building up to my favorite holiday, which is Christmas. We have been listening to Christmas songs in the van and my dad tells us stories from previous Christmases and we get really excited about December 25^th. We start looking forward to Christmas as soon as Diwali ends. We go to watch the Nutcracker sometimes. I was scared the first time as a three year old. We start turning on our diwali lights around first week of December and it makes me feel very happy to see the lights on every night. We bake the cookies and put some milk for Santa. I usually try to stay awake to see Santa bring up gifts, though I do get to see where he is on the internet. By the time he is on the East Coast, I am already sleepy. Next day, we get up to usually see many boxes of presents from Santa waiting for us. My cousin comes over and we rip the gifts and also exchange gifts. My aunts and uncles from all over send me gifts and I am not allowed to open them.